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In the dark months following Pearl Harbor, America struck back with the Pacific Raids of 1942. From February 1 to March 10, US Navy carriers launched the first offensive operations of the Pacific War, targeting Japanese strongholds across the Marshall Islands, Wake Island, Marcus Island, and New Guinea. These pioneering strikes established carrier aviation supremacy and earned participants a campaign star, setting the stage for decisive victories at Coral Sea and Midway.
Following the devastating Pearl Harbor attack, the US Navy found itself with its battleship force crippled but its aircraft carriers intact. Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander-in-Chief of the US Fleet, immediately recognized that the surviving carrier force represented America's primary offensive weapon in the Pacific. Although stripped of his battleships and outnumbered 10:3 in carriers, Admiral King decided to hit back at Japan's rapidly expanding Pacific empire immediately, in an effort to keep the Japanese off-balance.
The Pacific Raids campaign, spanning February 1 through March 10, 1942, represented the United States Navy's first systematic offensive operations of World War II. These tactical airstrikes and naval artillery attacks were conducted against Imperial Japanese Navy garrisons across the Marshall Islands, Gilbert Islands, Wake Island, Marcus Island, and New Guinea. The campaign earned its participants the right to wear a campaign star on their Asia-Pacific Theater ribbon, marking this period as a distinct and significant phase of the Pacific War.
Ironically, this strategy had already been spelled out in prewar planning. The plan, named Rainbow 5, called for raids against the Japanese-occupied Marshall Islands using three aircraft carriers and supporting cruisers and destroyers to bombard Japanese installations by air and sea. Admiral Chester Nimitz and Vice Admiral William "Bull" Halsey now planned to execute a version of Rainbow 5 without the battleships, which were no longer available.
|
Date |
Operation |
Target |
Task Force |
Result |
|
February 1 |
Marshall-Gilberts Raids |
Kwajalein, Wotje, Taroa, Jaluit, Mili, Makin |
TF 8 & TF 17 |
First carrier raids; 15 Japanese aircraft destroyed |
|
February 20 |
Aborted Rabaul Raid |
Rabaul, New Britain |
TF 11 |
Cancelled due to detection; O'Hare's Medal of Honor action |
|
February 24 |
Wake Island Raid |
Wake Island |
TF 16 |
Airfield and fuel storage attacked |
|
March 4 |
Marcus Island Raid |
Marcus Island |
TF 16 |
Closest raid to Japanese home islands |
|
March 10 |
Lae-Salamaua Raid |
Lae and Salamaua, New Guinea |
TF 17 |
First two-carrier operation; 4 ships sunk |
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz - Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, provided overall strategic direction for the campaign from Pearl Harbor. The attack was ordered by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, as a warm-up and practice for his air groups.
Vice Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. - Commanding Task Force 8 centered on USS Enterprise, Halsey was described as an aggressive commander who was energetic and demanding. In the early months of the war, as the nation was rocked by the fall of one western bastion after another, Halsey looked to take the fight to the enemy. Halsey's aggressive commitment inspired its American participants to invent the mythical "Haul Ass With Halsey" club.
Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher - Commanded Task Force 17 centered on USS Yorktown, Fletcher led successful raids on the southern Marshall and Gilbert Islands during the opening strikes.
Vice Admiral Wilson Brown - Commander of Task Force BAKER built around USS Lexington, Brown initially planned the ambitious Rabaul raid before redirecting to the successful Lae-Salamaua operation.
Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue - Commander of the Japanese 4th Fleet, Inoue had overall command of Japanese garrisons in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands.
Rear Admiral Eiji Gotō - Commander of the IJN's 24th Air Flotilla, Gotō controlled Japanese aircraft dispersed throughout the island bases.
Rear Admiral Kajioka Sadamichi - Led the Japanese escort group for the Lae-Salamaua invasion, including heavy cruisers Aoba, Kinugasa, Furutaka and Kako.
Task Force 16 was re-formed in mid-February 1942 around Enterprise, with Vice Admiral William F. Halsey in command, supported by cruisers Salt Lake City and Northampton, along with destroyer escorts.
Douglas SBD Dauntless - The SBD was the United States Navy's main carrier-based scout/dive bomber from mid-1940 through mid-1944. During the first critical year of the war, the Navy flew SBD-2s and SBD-3s, with the SBD-3 featuring self-sealing fuel tanks, crew armor and an armored windscreen.
Grumman F4F Wildcat - Although the Wildcat was a sturdy, well-armed fighter, she lacked the speed and maneuverability possessed by its nemesis, the nimble Japanese Zero. Fighter pilots developed techniques to maximize the Wildcat's strengths and minimize its weaknesses.
Douglas TBD Devastator - Although it was one of the most advanced naval aircraft in the world when adopted by the US Navy in 1937, it had quickly been outclassed by advances in naval aircraft design. The Devastator had a cruising speed of only 130 mph and carried the notoriously unreliable MK 13 aerial torpedo.
The Marshalls–Gilberts raids were tactical airstrikes and naval artillery attacks by United States Navy aircraft carrier and other warship forces against Imperial Japanese Navy garrisons in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands on 1 February 1942. It was the first of six American raids against Japanese-held territories.
With less than 24 hours remaining before their first offensive mission of the war, the men of Enterprise and her Air Group prepared. Fighting Six installed homemade armor - literally made of boilerplate - behind the seat of each Wildcat, a vital if weighty addition their Japanese counterparts would never consider.
The simultaneous strikes targeted multiple objectives:
Task Force 8 Targets (Enterprise Group):
Task Force 17 Targets (Yorktown Group):
Aircraft from TF 8 struck Kwajalein, Wotje, and Taroa, while cruisers and destroyers bombarded Wotje and Taroa. The strikes inflicted light to moderate damage on the three islands' naval garrisons, sank three small warships and damaged several others, including the light cruiser Katori, and destroyed 15 Japanese aircraft.
The heavy cruiser USS Chester was hit and slightly damaged by a Japanese aerial bomb, the Enterprise caught fire after a near miss by a bomb, and six Enterprise aircraft - five SBD Dauntless dive bombers and one F4F Wildcat fighter - were lost.
"The raids had little long-term strategic impact but provided valuable experience in carrier air operations, which hardened the U.S. carrier groups for future combat against Japanese forces."
On February 24, 1942, Task Force 16, commanded by Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., led the Wake Island Raid. USS Enterprise and TF 16 again raided Japanese bases across the north Pacific, striking Wake Island and destroying several aircraft and several hundred thousand liters of fuel.
Enterprise left Pearl Harbor on February 14, but two days later, the carrier received news that the rendezvous with Yorktown and the attack on Eniwetok would be terminated; Enterprise would only conduct the attack on Wake. Again, Rear-Admiral Raymond Spruance led a bombardment group with cruisers Northampton and Salt Lake City, destroyers Benham and Maury.
The Wake Island operation demonstrated the challenges of coordinated operations: Bad weather hampered cooperation between air and naval forces. 18 nautical miles off Wake, Spruance was jumped by fighters, which however did no damage. At ten to eight, three minutes after Spruance had commenced firing, the 49-plane airstrike reached its target.
The Marcus Island raid shocked the Japanese military mindset—that island was only 1,000 air miles from Tokyo and some 600 miles from the Bonin Islands with its large military base, and all were situated in local, 'Japanese-controlled' waters.
Halsey reached Marcus on March 4 and launched his planes so as to strike the island in the first light of the day. Alas, his planes were almost thirty minutes early. Nevertheless, they hit their targets in the diffuse light of a pending sunrise and so surprised the enemy that only one SBD was lost.
This operation represented the closest American forces had come to the Japanese home islands since the start of the war, serving as both a strategic probe and psychological blow to Japanese confidence.
In response to Japanese landings at Salamaua and Lae on March 8, Admiral Frank Fletcher launched air-carrier raids from TF 17 against those newly inserted Japanese forces. The surprise attacks were the first American operation presenting a two-carrier (Yorktown and Lexington) task force—a prelude to future tactics.
Two principal strategical considerations led to the Lae-Salamaua attack. First, it was desired that the Japanese advance southward be checked. Secondly, United States Army troops were to be transported from Australia to New Caledonia between the 7th and 12th of March, and it was expedient that our fleet provide a "cover" for this movement.
Brown's staff looked to launch a strike from the Gulf of Papua, south of New Guinea, to hit the shipping in the Huon Gulf. This would require the two air groups to fly across the formidable Owen Stanley mountain range, which was poorly charted. SBDs were sent to Townsville in Australia and Port Moresby in New Guinea to gather valuable data about flying conditions in the area.
In the early morning of 10 March 1942, Task Force 17 aircraft carriers Lexington and Yorktown launched their aircraft from the Gulf of Papua off the southern shore of New Guinea. The Task Force had avoided detection by the Japanese, and the approach of their aircraft from over the Owen Stanley Range enabled the attackers to appear seemingly out of nowhere.
Approaching the northern landing areas, the attack commenced with the SBD Dauntless dive bombers of Lexington's Scouting Squadron 2 (VS-2), which struck the Japanese shipping at Lae at 0922. They were soon followed by Dauntless dive bombers of Bombing Squadron 2 (VB-2) and the Douglas TBD Devastators of Lexington's Torpedo Squadron 2 (VT-2), which attacked shipping at Salamaua at 0938.
The surprise attacks sank an armed merchant cruiser, two transport ships, and a minesweeper and damaged several more shore craft and other assets. The operation demonstrated the potential of multi-carrier task forces and trans-terrain strike capabilities that would become hallmarks of later Pacific operations.
For the invasion of Salamaua and Lae, the Japanese 4th Fleet, under the command of Shigeyoshi Inoue, and Tomitarō Horii's South Seas Detachment established a landing force built around the 2nd Battalion, 144th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Major Horie Masao, and a battalion of the Kure Special Naval Landing Force.
The Imperial Japanese Navy assigned the heavy cruisers Aoba, Kinugasa, Furutaka and Kako, the light cruisers Tenryu, Tatsuta, and Yūbari, the destroyers Mutsuki, Mochizuki, Yoyoi, Asanagi, Oite, and Yūnagi.
The Marshalls were being defended by the Japanese 24th Air Flotilla, which, spread among various islands, sported 33 old fighters, nine bombers, and nine flying boats. The remaining units of the air flotilla, especially its bombers, were located to the south at Truk and Rabaul.
The limited Japanese response revealed significant flaws in their defensive strategy: The Japanese apparently did not realize that their concept of a perimeter defense using dispersed island garrisons had serious flaws in that the garrisons were too far apart to be sufficiently mutually supporting to prevent penetration by enemy carrier forces.
The Pacific Raids achieved several concrete military objectives:
The raids helped lift the morale of the U.S. Navy and the American public, still reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack and the loss of Wake Island. More significantly, the raids convinced the Japanese army, which had so far opposed Admiral Yamamoto's plans to attack Midway, that it was necessary to destroy the American aircraft carriers.
"These raids, along with the Doolittle Raid in April 1942, helped convince the IJN's Combined Fleet commander, Isoroku Yamamoto, that he needed to draw the American carriers into battle."
A series of American raids gave ship crews and members of their air groups invaluable combat experience before the large air-sea battles awaiting them from mid-year—the battle of the Coral Sea, the battle of Midway, and the bloody campaign around Guadalcanal.
The Pacific Raids campaign established the foundation for American naval aviation dominance in the Pacific War. The experience gained during these operations directly contributed to American success at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942) and the decisive victory at the Battle of Midway (June 1942), where the same air groups and commanders who participated in the Pacific Raids would achieve one of the most significant naval victories in history.
Based on extensive research from official U.S. Navy historical records, combat narratives, and authoritative World War II Pacific theater documentation. Sources include the Office of Naval Intelligence combat narratives, the Naval History and Heritage Command archives, and scholarly works on early Pacific War carrier operations.
U.S. Navy Official Documents:
Individual Ship Records:
Samuel Eliot Morison Series:
Other Official Histories:
Carrier Operations and Naval Aviation:
Admiral Halsey and Task Force Operations:
Japanese Sources:
Naval Aviation:
Key Naval Leaders:
Pilot Memoirs:
Pacific War Strategy:
Naval Institute Proceedings:
Naval History Magazine:
Academic Journals:
Pearl Harbor and Immediate Aftermath:
Broader Pacific War Context:
Technical and Tactical Analysis:
Naval History and Heritage Command:
National Archives:
This bibliography provides both foundational sources for serious research and accessible reading for general interest in the Pacific Raids campaign and early carrier warfare operations.
